ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Album Notes

RootsDeepDown is a folk rock band trying to follow Jesus and tell people the good news that God loves them.In 2014 we started leading worship together and asking Jesus to give us songs that spoke to our culture and sounded like Cape Breton. In 2013 Joe started recording a solo EP, The One We've Been Waiting For, which was nominated for an East Coast Music Award for Gospel Recording of the Year. While practicing for the CD launch party, we all decided that this things sounds way better with a few good friends and RDD was born.Awoke & Raised is a collection of songs meant to speak to our culture. We love singing worship songs from all over, but we believe God speaks to people in their own context so we wanted to write songs that sound like Jesus on the east coast. Hurricane is about his unrelenting love that causes us to be adopted into his own familyBoat came from a week of looking at the creation story, imagine what it would have been like to sit next God while he spoke creation into existence, I'm ready to meet that maker.Psalm 23 is what it says, our version of probably the most well know song ever written.I heard Mumford and Sons, bought a banjo and sat down to write a banjo tune, and Run came out. Running in the Kingdom of Heaven isn't always easy, but as long as your running to the one...Rise Up is our identity song, it was hard to sing this song when I first wrote it because I don't alway "feel" all the things the bible says about me, righteous, holy, healed, etc., but truth trumps feelings, so we sing it as often as we can to remind ourselves.I didn't grow up in church so didn't learn many of the classic hymns, so I wanted to write something that sounded like a old classic that people could sing along with. Shield has become a sing along fave with the local congregation.Bright Eyes was an attempt to capture the story of some incredible women I met on a trip to Ethiopia. They were all widows and single moms who'd come to the city in desperation and poverty but had found hope and new life in Jesus, even in the midst of darkness. Before they worked each morning making paper bead jewelry, they worship Jesus. I've never heard anything like it.Bones is reminder of Ezekiel's vision, I often to to call on Jesus to breath new life into me, and he always does.Prodigal Brother is an east coast lament of a father who wants his son to realize all how much he loves him.Awoke & Raised is an Easter song, the explicit Gospel that Jesus came to rescue us and give us new life. This one will make you want to dance for joy and sing out loud the truth of how good Jesus really is.